The demonstration by the Trinamul Youth Congress in Jalpaiguri on Tuesday. Picture by Biplab Basak

Jalpaiguri, Dec. 14: The state school education department is planning to appoint as primary schoolteachers 320 candidates whose names had been withheld in the published list.

The drive to recruit 1,411 primary schoolteachers in the Jalpaiguri district was conducted in July and the names of 1,091 candidates made it to the final list.

The remaining 320 job applicants have been sitting on a relay hunger-strike in front of the office of the district primary school council here from December 6, demanding their immediate appointment.

The school education minister, Partha De, said family members of those who had given up land for government projects were among the 320 candidates who had not been appointed. ‘There are some legal problems with their certificates and we are trying to sort them out as soon as possible,” De said.

Sources in the school education department said of the 1,411 posts, 95 had been reserved for land losers. Besides the land-losers, ex-servicemen and physically challenged are also among the applicants who were not considered for appointment.

The fast has hit the functioning of the school council office. “I have sent a report on the impasse at the primary school council to the authorities in Calcutta and I have been assured that the government will soon clear the names of 320 candidates whose appointments has been withheld,” said Kallol Roy, the chairperson of the district primary school council.

Sanjit Kumar, a spokesperson for the agitators, said the hunger-strike would continue till they were given appointment letters.

The recruitment drive had been marred by allegations of corruption and nepotism. De had already announced that jobs of around 340 newly appointed teachers would be scrapped because of irregularities.

The Trinamul Youth Congress today held a demonstration in front of the district magistrate’s office, demanding that those involved in the recruitment scam be immediately punished.

The district president of the Trinamul Youth Congress, Somnath Pal, said if the school education department did not make public its inquiry report on the allegations, the organisation would intensify the agitation.

The district magistrate, Vandana Yadav, said her office had not yet received the inquiry report from the school education department.